The USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) was buzzed earlier this week by a pair of Russian SU-24 Fencer bombers as the Cook transited the Baltic Sea. The Fencers flew an attack profile and flew within 100 feet (and some say within 30 feet) of the Cook in what the Cook skipper CDR Charles Hamilton called an unsafe and unprofessional manner.
While the incident was unusually unsafe, this kind of response from Russia is no surprise. Russia has long been irked by the U.S. Navy’s stubborn insistence on exercising its right of free passage through international waters, including the Baltic and Black Seas near Russia’s coast. Russia has a history of aggressively challenging the U.S. Navy as it operates in these areas, behavior which has sometimes resulted
in collisions.
While some old-salt Navy shipmates have criticized the Cook’s response as “weak,” the truth is that the Cook is extraordinarily capable of defending itself and could have easily handled the Fencers. However, given the history of operating near Russia, the Cook was almost certainly prepared for this aggressive response to its presence and did not take Russia’s bait by refusing to escalate the confrontation.
Given the close call of this latest incident, though, I don’t know if the U.S. Navy will be so willing to play nice the next time around. I would not be surprised if any future Russian bombers that pretend-attack a U.S. Navy warship operating near Russia get pretend-lit-up by that ship’s weapons radars.
Overall, though, the Russian military remains a shadow of its former self. The plunging oil prices have gutted Russia’s military funding. These highly-publicized dangerous confrontations are nothing more than propaganda used to prop up Russian nationalism.
In short, nothing to see here. Move along.
Russia’s military rejected criticism by U.S. European Command on Sunday that a Russian jet had made aggressive maneuvers near a U.S. reconnaissance plane over the Baltic Sea, a second incident in the region between the Cold War-era foes in the past week.
Source: Russia’s military rejects U.S. criticism of new Baltic encounter | Reuters